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Old 23-12-2007, 07:42 PM
falcon falcon is offline
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First recorded activity by GardenBanter: Dec 2007
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Quote:
Originally Posted by JB[_1_] View Post
OK, this is becoming a daily occurrence, a GBH flying up and perching on a tree limb high above the pond or strolling around the pond perimeter... snip... Here's my question: How big a fish will the GBH
eat? I have three Koi that will go over 10 lbs each, surely they aren't at
risk, are they?
Ditto that problem here, JB. A GBH took a nice roughly 16" Kohaku from us yesterday, and although I caught him in the act as he was about to swallow it, he was able to quickly fly off with the Koi still hanging halfway out of its beak. I saw him finish it off in the tops of a large pine tree two lots over.

I was also hoping the size of our other Koi would be a deterrent, but from reading this and other forums, unfortunately that seems overly optimistic. Even if they can't eat them given a larger size, it seems much damage, some fatally so, is already done with the spearing.

Our pond design doesn't lend itself to netting or wires, and although we feed only bottom food, have never hand fed so the Koi aren't accustomed to coming up very close to us on the pond edges, and have 5 foot depths in many places with reefs and ledges under which they can hide, unfortunately they do enjoy surface swimming and quite frankly, I'm just hoping at least some of them are able to learn to stay deep...